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Communication – The Two-Way Street to Dealing with Change and Uncertainty

Robert McCloskey once famously said “I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant”. Or in other words, communication is fraught with enormous potential for misunderstanding, misinformation and misinterpretation such that we can never be quite sure what people have really heard.

One thing is for certain though – if you’re NOT communicating at all or are doing so intermittently or poorly, there will be large gaps between what you think you’re saying and what others think they are hearing (or not hearing as the case may be). Our Real World Leadership resource can provide some great extra details.

Nearly half the leaders (47%) believe they’re communicating to a great extent about the future of the organisation yet just 29% of employees and 16% of managers believe this is the case.

Communication about your personal future

Employees about leader/Manager communication

Managers about leaders communication

Leaders about their communication to staff

Great extent

24

15

39

Moderate extent

46

43

51

Small extent

21

29

6

Not at all

9

13

4

Great/moderate extent

70

58

90

Small extent/not at all

30

42

10

Employees – To what extent have your business leaders and senior managers reassured you about your future with your organisation?

Managers – To what extent have your business leaders and senior managers communicated with you about your future with the organisation?

Leaders – To what extent have you communicated with your staff about their future with the organisation?

Leaders and managers need to recognise that reassurance about the organisation’s future and the future of individuals is paramount to securing a stable, productive and harmonious workforce.

Periodically ‘settling the horses’ by providing information, vision, direction and purpose to the people who make the organisation perform will help enable them to deliver results as a team. When this focus also highlights the future for each individual, their meaning and purpose become clearer and their performance improves as a result. Click here for some extended details from our new L.E.A.D survey Whitepaper.